Phil Ivey

5 WSOP bracelets1 WPT titleOver 10 millions of dollars earned during his career.He plays online at FullTilt Poker.Phil Ivey was born on 1st February 1976 in Riverside, California. He was only 3 months old when his both parents moved to New Jersey. Phil learned poker game from his grandfather, another of his passions being the video games that he is currently playing with pleasure too. At 16, Phil participated regularly at poker games organized by his father in the kitchen. At some point, Phil got tired from taking his father’s money and decided to try his luck in Atlantic City. When he was 18, Phil obtained a fake identity card and he was often visiting Atlantic City, being known as "No Home Jerome", because of his fake name, "Jerome Graham" and because he was always present at the game table. Ivey didn’t immediately win. On the contrary, he lost much money and there were days when he had no money to pay his rent. When he reached 21 years old, he moved in Atlantic City and played under his real name. "No Home Jerome" was about to become "Tiger Woods of poker". His luck was about to change. This is when he also met his future wife, Luciaetta. He won his first WSOP bracelet at 23, beating Phil Hellmuth and Amarillo Slim, legends of poker. In 2002 he won 3 WSOP bracelets, equalizing Hellmuth and Ted Forrest when it comes to winning the most WSOP titles within one year. In 2005 he won his fifth bracelet, leaving with a $630.000 prize. In 2008, Phil won a World Poker Tour title for the first time, winning 1,6 millions of dollars and reaching the end of the dark series of 7 WPT tournaments without success. Ivey won almost 3 millions of dollars by participating at WPT. In 2006, Ivey was a European Poker Tour finalist, being the second after the Norwegian Bjorn-Erik Glenne. In 2005 he won the 1 million dollars prize at Monte Carlo Millions tournament. In 2008, his earnings were more than 10 millions of dollars. Ivey played a memorable poker game against billionaire Andy Beal. In 2006, the pro players group known as “The Corporation” accepted Andy Beal’s invitation to play Limit Hold'Em. Beal, a genius mathematician, had developed a “perfect” method of playing this type of poker. Beal initially lost 3,3 millions of dollars. He came back after a week and won 13,6 millions of dollars. Being in a difficult position, the “Corporation” group chose Phil Ivey to recover a part of the losses. Ivey not only won the deficit of 10 millions of dollars, but also won almost 6,6 millions more. Andy Beal totally lost 16,6 millions of dollars against Ivey. Beal left Las Vegas declaring that he will never play poker again (although this is not the first time he says so). Phil Ivey currently lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Luciaetta, and participates at charity events. Amongst his friends, names like Ja Rule or Irv Gotti are present. Ivey is a one of the founders of Full Tilt Poker, a company that values around one billion of dollars.